Why it's so hard to declassify secrets

3/19/13 3:43 PM EDT

Former Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson's speech in New York on Monday is drawing attention for his analysis of the pros and cons of a "national security court" to green light drone strikes against U.S. citizens.

But what caught my eye was his candid explanation of why it's so hard to declassify secrets.

The reality is that it is much easier to classify something than it is to declassify it, and there are huge bureaucratic biases against declassifying something once it is classified. Put 10 national security officials in a room to discuss declassifying a certain fact, they will all say I’m for transparency in principle, but at least 7 will be concerned about second-order effects, someone will say “this is really hard, we need to think about this some more,” the meeting is adjourned, and the 10 officials go on to other more pressing matters.

It sounds like a pretty accurate description of the suspicions of transparency advocates about why the process seems so constipated, even when the underlying information is widely known.

Johnson's description may also underscore calls for the need for someone inside the government to be a kind of "transparency czar," who can't be distracted by other priorities. Deputy White House Counsel Norm Eisen played this role in the first couple years of the Obama administration, though even then his ability to extend his mandate into the national security sphere was limited. (He was appointed ambassador to the Czech Republic at the end of 2010.)

Another illustration of difficulties with the classification system appears in Tuesday's Secrecy News authored by Steven Aftergood. The bottom line appears to be that while, in theory, someone can be punished for improperly classifying information or improperly declassifying it, no one can be punished for failing to declassify it.